


In Dead Leaves And Fleeting Skies

by katajainen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: ... so. much. handholding, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, But those you love, Cultural Differences, Dwarf Courting, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Getting Together, Handholding, Kissing, Miscommunication, Morning Sex, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Polyamory, Polygamy, Sibling Incest, Sparring as Flirting, home is not a place, this turned real mushy at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:22:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13022202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen
Summary: In which Tauriel thinks she could turn a hopeless infatuation into friendship. It's no easy feat, given that someone is working at cross-purposes to her - and they outnumber her two against one.





	In Dead Leaves And Fleeting Skies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diemarysues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diemarysues/gifts).



> A holiday gift for diemarysues who asked, among other things, angst leading to fluff/smut/fluffy smut and kisses. Thank you for giving me the chance to write for such a delightful ship, and hope you like the end result! (As you can see, the story sort of took on a life of its own, and went _a bit_ past the 1k minimum...)
> 
> The title is from the Nightwish song 'Élan'.
> 
> ***
> 
> The cultural concept of dwarven brothers (or cousins, or close friends) going courting together is borrowed with author's kind permission (thank you again for letting me play around with your idea!) from pibroch's lovely story [Gem](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1194282/chapters/2437125). If you haven't read it already, you really should, it's a treasure.

After the battle, Tauriel had followed her king back to the forest, demoted and stripped of her rank, without saying her farewells, without once looking back.

That first winter had been like the stunned silence in the wake of a fatal blow, empty like the last breath before the body remembers to fall. They had mourned their dead, but there had been little peace for the living. Thranduil had set them to hunt spiders, with more zeal any other winter-tide. It was as if, Tauriel had thought to herself, as if hearing how the Lady of the Golden Wood had sent the Necromancer fleeing from his fortress had put the King of the Woodland Realm in a frenzy to scour his own domain clean of the last remnants of that malicious power.

In truth, Tauriel had cared little for the reasons of her liege. She had been content to roam the length and breadth of the forest in search of the well-hidden nests where the cold-stricken beasts lay in slow idle torpor. She had gone in company, and she had gone alone, only stopping for enough rest to stay on her feet, only for the briefest respites of dreamless reverie, nestled safe among the leaves and boughs of her childhood home.

She had feared of what she might dream, otherwise.

She had been so angry at the beginning: at Kíli for his sweet, idle words and sweeter looks, but even more at herself for being so easily beguiled, for hanging too high hopes on poison-fever talk.

But as the months passed and the winter wore on, she had begun to hope that her heart might be eased in due time, as it done before when a simple infatuation and shared pleasure had left her craving for what the other would not, could not give. Only this time, she’d gone without even a single kiss, and was left aching all the fiercer.

Then the thaw had come, and with it the summons for her to go north once more.

***

Bard, who was now the Lord of Dale in all but name, had called for a meeting between his own people, the Woodland Realm, and the Kingdom under the Mountain. It was understood that he would have need of both the trade with the forest and resources of the mountain if he ever meant to rebuild his city, but Thranduil had disdained the notion, calling ‘trying to sit on two seats and missing both,’ and sent his son and steward to treat for him, apparently expecting little success from the effort.

But no matter how insignificant the Elvenking might have set their goals, appearances dictated his envoys have a proper retinue. Legolas never said so, but Tauriel suspected he’d had a hand in putting her name forward.

She had been pleased with the journey at first, for she had discovered one reason to regret the loss of her position: it had left her and Legolas with duties so different they would hardly ever share a company. Bereft of her friend, of her brother in all but blood, Tauriel had found herself lonely.

Once they reached Dale, however, she discovered King Thorin had reasoned much the same as her own liege: instead of coming himself, he had sent his freshly-made Consort, one Bilbo Baggins, once dubbed elf-friend – and his sister-sons.

She had been caught unawares when Kíli swept her in a fierce embrace, returning the gesture without thinking, some treacherous part of her singing with the feel of those strong arms around her, even if she knew he would never hold her the way she would have him do. She had not expected such a welcome, after the way they had parted.

 _‘Do you think she could have loved me?’_ Tauriel doubted Kíli even remembered speaking the words now, and his brother had made no mention of them since, for good reason.

For when Fíli had pleaded for her to help his brother, she had thought nothing of his despair. And when Kíli had knelt by his brother’s still form on the battlefield, she had first believed his tears were for a kinsman only – only then Fíli had spoken, alive in spite of his wounds, and Kíli had made a raw sound of relief, and kissed him. Kissed him like a lover would, his hands gently cupping his face, and Tauriel had wished she could have averted her ears as easily she did her eyes. Because willing or not, she could make out those soft, halting words not meant for her to hear, and she had been desperate to leave then, but she had held Fíli’s pulse beneath the weight of her hands, and had feared he might bleed out should she let go.

‘At your service,’ the older brother replied to her greeting now, and she noticed how gaunt he had grown in the winter, with thin lines etched on his face where there used to be none. Yet he stood tall among all the company, and in all looked much more hale than at their last meeting – and when Tauriel told him as much, she took heart at the startled smile stealing over his face.

As the talks in Dale dragged on, Tauriel was not surprised to have Kíli seeking her company, but she had not expected to be whiling away evenings by the fireside with the older brother as well. She found she did not mind: among all the dwarves, Fíli had an especially fine singing voice, and he knew many songs West from the Misty Mountains she had never heard. But to hear him singing with his brother stirred something within her she quickly stamped down and would not name.

Then one day Fíli had stayed behind while Kíli went hunting with Bard’s son. He cited the negotiations as his reason, but Tauriel knew Master Baggins would have done fine on his own, and wondered if all these months after the battle, Fíli’s once-broken legs might still not pain him. That very evening, he came to her with the board and pieces she’d seen him use to play with his brother or others in the Mountain delegation, and asked if she would learn the game.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because there’s only so many evenings one can spend at songs and stories. Because I think you would have the mind for it. Do your people not play games of strategy?’

‘We do,’ she said, and waited. It felt to her like he had more to say yet.

‘My brother is fond of you,’ Fíli said as he laid out the board between them, ‘and I would know you. Will you play the king or the assassins?’

‘What is the difference?’

The difference, it turned out, was one of goals and methods, and for all the apparent simplicity of the game, Tauriel soon found herself absorbed.

Much later, she was startled by a soft touch at her arm.

‘Your move.’

‘I know; I was only thinking…’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ Fíli withdrew his hand. ‘I wondered if you might have fallen asleep. With your eyes open.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve heard your kind does that.’

‘I would not! Or do you think I find the game so tedious? Or the company?’ She added, almost an afterthought.

‘I hope you don’t,’ he said softly, and Tauriel could not help smiling as she assured him that no, she certainly did not.

Eventually, what could be agreed on had been agreed on, and what needed to be signed was signed. The day before they were set to leave, Fíli and Kíli took her outside of the ruined city. Kíli pointed out a spot on the easternmost spur of the Mountain and asked if she noticed anything out of the ordinary. When she confessed it looked like any other place in the mountain face, he grinned with glee.

‘I _knew_ it was built clever enough to be hidden from any eyes, or–’ he corrected himself– ‘ from any eyes on the ground; the ravens say they can see it, but they fly.’

‘They can see what?’

‘The lookout,’ Fíli replied.

Tauriel squinted, but she still could not discern anything purpose-built atop the rocky shoulder, or any movement either. ‘Should I take your word that it’s there? And should you even be telling me, if it’s meant to stay hidden?’

‘Our word has quite a good standing in such matters, and we’ve trusted you with more in the past.’

It suddenly dawned on Tauriel. ‘You wanted to know if an elf could spot it, didn’t you?’

‘That, too.’ Kíli shrugged with a winsome smile. ‘Would you like to see what it’s like up there? You could, if you wanted.’

‘What Kíli’s trying to say is that we would like to invite you to come to the Mountain with us. As our guest. You could see that lookout, if you will, and other things we have found or made besides.’

‘Please say yes!’

She should say no. But she was no-one of consequence in the Woodland Realm anymore; Legolas could easily spare her when he would leave to return to the forest. Besides, during the past weeks, she had come to cherish the tentative friendship that had grown between the three of them, born not of shared perils, but of shared company.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. For a while.’

This time, she was ready for Kíli’s bone-crushing hug, but as he let her loose, she was not prepared for Fíli to hold her at arm’s length, his hands on her elbows careful and strangely awkward.

‘We’re happy to have you,’ he said, and his smile made her whole body flush with sudden warmth, welcome in the cold pale sunlight of springtime.

***

On this first spring since its reclaiming, Erebor was still a large kingdom with few people in it, even if Tauriel was told more arrived each week: small parties of wandering dwarves, or fortune-seekers from the Iron Hills and beyond. And large caravans from the kingdom-in-exile in far-off Ered Luin were set to arrive later in the summer. Tauriel felt secretly glad of the relative emptiness of the mountain; she already felt like the odd one out, even without being the single one of her kind in a multitude of dwarves.

She was offered a high and airy room, windowless, but with sunlight slanting in through an aperture near the ceiling every evening, directed there by some feat of dwarven engineering. ‘There’s not much in the way of comforts, I’m afraid, but at least it’s clean,’ the white-haired dwarf – Balin, her memory supplied the name – said apologetically. ‘But I’m sure those who bring guests unannounced–’ he looked pointedly at Fíli and Kíli– ‘will be glad to provide them with appropriate furnishings as well.’

And so in the first two days Tauriel found herself the recipient of several small but useful things that somehow managed to appear into her room while she herself was elsewhere: first a peg to hang her cloak, then a sturdy stool tall enough to sit comfortably, and a spare lamp, with a polished disc of copper set behind the flame to amplify the light. When she attempted to give thanks, though, she was rebuffed with a nonchalant ‘that’s the least we can do’.

In all, she was received much more hospitably than she had expected, but it appeared as if King Thorin’s Company had a tacit agreement to make her welcome– which extended to somewhat blunt lessons in courtesy to any others who would question her presence.

The early days of her visit were a flurry of people to meet and things to see, but as the days turned to weeks, small routines began to appear: if Kíli went hunting, alone or with a larger party, she would join them, in part to pay back even some small portion of the kindness she had been shown, and in part – a larger part, she needed to admit – for the pleasure of seeing Kíli’s smile when she offered to go with him.

On her return she would seek out Fíli and join him in his endless repetition of swordplay forms. She had been embarrassed when he had first caught her watching, afraid that her curiosity might insult. But instead she had been offered an opportunity to learn, and was now working through the stances and guards, cuts and thrusts, in the same deliberate slow motion as Fíli did beside him, enjoying the quiet concentration of the exercise, and secretly glad of her unfamiliarity with the style that she hoped evened the comparison between them, for Fíli still showed the toll of his long recovery. She would always plead weariness first, and he had never called her out on it.

The weeks turned into a month, and well into another, and then came the day when Fíli asked her to spar with him. Kíli would let him off too easily, he claimed, and that would do him no good.

Tauriel could have told him he still walked with a limp, that some days she could see the lines on his face tightening little by little from morning till night, that she longed to smooth them off but doubted it would be welcome. But had their places been reversed, she would have been equally impatient. It had been nigh six months (but such a high fall; she still dreaded the times that particular memory would surface to disturb her rest).

And so it was they came to face each other across a circle of tight-packed sand, blunt steel in their hands. Tauriel kept her gaze out of focus, flitting from Fíli’s hands to his feet to his eyes. Waited, counting soundlessly to herself, then without warning lunged at him.

Fíli sidestepped smartly, and would have gotten inside her guard, if she had been where he thought she would. Instead, she heard steel whisper against leather, her steel, Fíli’s leathers.

‘One,’ she breathed. Fíli spun around, a bright grin on his face, and came hard at her, steel ringing on steel as she blocked and parried, then let out an irritated huff when she felt a flat of a blade slap hard at her thigh.

Both of them were more careful after scoring those first hits. They were well matched, Tauriel thought: her longer reach against his strength, and while she was unfamiliar with the heavy blades, Fíli wielded them with deceptive swiftness.

She fainted a retreat, to make him chase after her, but he would wait her out. If she attacked, Fíli would block whatever she tried, countering it with careless flourish, dancing on the edge of recklessness. _Trying to catch me by surprise–_

Then as she spun he followed her, grabbing her wrist and yanking her off-balance even before his own abandoned blade fell into the sand. She tried to twist away from the leg she knew was set to trip her, but he was crowding close and pushing at her; at the last moment, she got her foot hooked around his ankle, and pulled, so he came down with her. She twisted, grappling him, her arm suddenly free, and she could _use_ that…

And then she had him, had him flat on his back beneath her, his sword-hand pinned firmly to the ground by the weight of her grip. She touched her own blunt steel lightly at the hollow of his throat, where she could see sweat beading on his skin, and smiled so wide her cheeks hurt with it.

‘Yield,’ Fíli managed breathlessly, tapping at the sand with his free hand. ‘I yield.’

‘I won’t fall for that a second time.’

‘You didn’t fall for it on the first.’

It came to her with a rush how close she was, straddling him like this. His hand was shaking almost imperceptibly, his pulse racing and skipping under her hand. Her own heart would not slow. She could lean down and… and then what?

Then the moment was gone, lost to her hesitation; she released him, and offering him a hand up, she spotted Kíli among the onlookers. He caught her gaze and held it, and she had a sudden hungry thought of kissing Fíli with his brother watching, and hoped the heat on her face could be explained by the exercise.

Kíli came up to them, still wearing that same intense look, but he only asked her if she might like another round.

It was a pity she liked sparring with Kíli. This time, knowing that Fíli was watching them, that whatever flourish Kíli put into his swordsmanship was to impress him, that she couldn’t help showing off herself was too much. She was torn between wanting to make it last, to keep a while longer under his gaze, and making it quick, to escape imagining quite another sort of entertainment with him watching. She didn’t need to pretend fumbling.

‘You’re dead,’ came a gleeful whisper at her ear, and she couldn’t help the rough sound of frustration that escaped her at the light press of steel at her kidney. How she wanted the other ways he would hold her close, how she wanted to turn her head and capture that grin with her own mouth– and perhaps he would let her, Kíli with his easy flirtation, and it might mean nothing to him, but it would mean something to her now, she realized, more than it would have, had she done as she pleased, long months past, enraptured by the unabashed awe on his face as he once told her of the blood moon.

They disentangled, and Fíli was no longer there.

‘You didn’t hear it from me, but he’s been busy making something for you,’ Kíli remarked, ‘and I think he just got a good reason to finish it quickly.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you looked like you were going to eat him alive, that’s why. Not that I blame you; that bout was a fine thing to watch.’ And that was no glib ‘I could have anything down my trousers’ smirk: the look of barely veiled intent on Kíli’s face made her breath catch in her chest and her skin tingle all over.

‘You mean to say the three of us could…’ she trailed off.

‘Or the two of us, if you can’t wait for Fíli – I’m sure he’d understand.’

Tauriel, her blood still beating quick from the sparring and Kíli’s words, leaned closer to the hand now caressing her cheek, then hesitated. ‘There’s no reason we can’t wait, is there?’

She thought she could see a brief flash of disappointment on his face, but it was quickly hidden. ‘If you say so, then there isn’t. Until later, then.’

On leaving the training grounds, she passed a building crew hanging up lanterns in a staircase, and could not come up with a good reason to decline when asked to help. As she locked her ankles around the stone’s girth atop a column, reaching out with her free hand to untangle a chain from the hook it was supposed to pass through, she realized how common such occurrences had become. There was, it seemed, no end to small tasks for one with nimble fingers who would climb boldly and was, as they would say, stronger than she looked, even if her understanding of stone went only as far as telling if it was smooth or coarse.

But you didn’t ask such things from a guest, did you? And why she should feel so content at not being treated like a guest was something she needed to examine in detail, but more than that she would know why learning  that she was desired in return had left her feeling uneasy rather than delighted.

***

At nightfall, she lay by herself on the stony knees of Ravenhill, gazing up into the cloudless dome of heavens as the stars lit one after the other. The great black birds were roosting for the night, and it was almost quiet save for the occasional squawk.

Quiet, until one raven alighted with a rustle but a handspan away from her.

‘Didn’t go far, did you?’ it asked in an almost conversational tone. ‘They feared you had gone back to the forest.’

‘Who did?’

‘Sons of Dís. They said to tell you they want to apologize if they’ve given offence.’

‘No. No they haven’t.’ Tauriel shook her head before she realized the bird might not understand the gesture. ‘Tell them… tell them I went to watch the stars. I’ll return in the morning.’

As the raven took off again in the dying light, Tauriel sighed. She _had_ left once before without saying proper goodbyes. It was understandable they should wonder. Yet it was but half a day, surely not long enough for them to miss her?

Above her, the deep azurean blue bled slowly into black, and a veil of small sparkling lights spread over it from one horizon to another. And she imagined those two in her bed, as she knew now they wanted to be, and she imagined going home after that, and the thought felt wrong. She missed Legolas; she missed others she had known all her life, the paths she could run without thinking, the green breath of the trees – but that was not what came first to her mind when she thought of home. Home, now, was something she could not grasp: Kíli’s quick words and easy smiles, Fíli’s songs and silences, and she was not sure if that was hers to call her own. Then she thought back on the little corner of the mountain that was hers, the small secretive gifts that had made her feel at home, and hoped.

***

She had nearly forgotten about the lookout, and Kíli’s promise to take her to see it, but that was the first thing he suggested when she found him and his brother waiting for her in the morning. The distraction was easy to recognize for what it was, but the company was no hardship, and she was somewhat curious regarding their destination.

The climb was long, four levels up from the Gates, if she counted right, until they emerged outside, at the foot of a steeply winding path cut straight into the living rock on the Southern face of the mountain.

‘It was the Eastern shoulder you showed me – that’s not where we’re going.’

‘No,’ Kíli admitted, ‘it’s not,’ and went on ahead of her.

‘Patience,’ said Fíli, with a smile that instilled the opposite thereof.

At the top the path leveled out, opening in a shallow triangle, a smooth-walled dent in the mountain’s armoured hide. At the corner furthest from the edge, two walls topped with a shingled roof sagged against the rock face.

‘This is not the same place,’ Fíli explained, ‘but the view is better.’

‘Besides–’ Kíli added with a sly wink– ‘this one is not in use, so our secrets are safe from you.’

The view – Tauriel turned her back to the mountain and looked her fill without the effort of climbing to distract her. What had once been the desolation of the dragon, gray and brown and sullen, a wasteland forever locked in winter without a spring, was now adorned throughout with green. The River Running was a brilliant band of silver with wide verdant borders, and the reed-thatched rooftops of Dale stood out pale and yellowing among the neat squares of freshly sprouting fields.

She had walked through all that land, many times over, but never before had she quite understood the scale of the change that had been wrought upon it in the course of one single winter and spring.

‘Imagine it in a year, or five years, or ten.’ Kíli had come to stand beside her, so close his arm was brushing against hers. ‘Uncle Thorin, Balin – those who remember how it was before – they tell there were copses of trees growing on the plain, pines on the mountain, and orchards around Dale. All that could grow back now, I suppose.’

‘I would like to see it,’ she heard herself say, and she meant it; to witness the land come alive again would be an untold privilege.

‘You could. You could stay, for as long as you want.’

‘We would that you stayed.’ That was Fíli, bracketing her from the other side, his bulk a shield against the crisp wind buffeting them. ‘Even if it might be too soon to ask it of you.’

Tauriel turned her head away from the southern horizon, to her right where a dark band marked Mirkwood-that-was. Would the forest miss her, if she stayed and let months pass on into years?

But of more import was this: would she be content as she was, content to share their friendship and their desire, when deep in her bones she knew it was not all she wanted? She turned away from them and the forest both, and walked back to the mountain’s uprising flank where the old guardhouse stood slowly crumbling.

‘We feared that you might not come back.’ That was Kíli, his touch on her shoulder prompting Tauriel to look up.

‘And that you might have given us our answer when we had thought ourselves safe to wait with the asking.’ Fíli nudged his brother forward half a step. ‘Go on.’

‘Right.’ Kíli squared his jaw. ‘I’m sure there is an official and proper way of doing this, but we were sort of pressed for time–’

‘Kee…’

‘I’m getting there. Tauriel– whether you stay or whether you go, I would want you to have this.’ From inside of his coat he drew a sheathed knife and offered it to her hilt first.

Slowly, Tauriel turned the gift in her hands. The sheath was of leather stiffened with interlacing slivers of wood, smoothed to a pale silvery glow. The blade, as she drew it forth, felt perfectly balanced, and no doubt sharp enough to split hairs, should she want to do so. She ran her thumb over the faintly yellowing bone of the hilt. It felt like it was made to fit her hand.

‘Deerbone,’ Kíli explained. ‘I think it makes for a less slippery grip than wood, and– and whatever you decide, I thought, well, I thought a hunter always needs a good knife, and I would rest more easily if I knew you had one of my own making.’

Tauriel glanced up at him: despite the stubborn jut of his jaw, his words and face belied his nervousness. ‘Thank you,’ she said quickly. ‘I couldn’t ask for any better.’

‘So you accept it?’ Kíli’s face melted into a relieved smile, and he caught her free hand in his. ‘Only you should know Fíli has made you a fancy something; he won’t let even me see it.’

‘Accept?’ Tauriel’s attention caught on the word, strangely out of place in the simple act of gift-giving… except that it might not be that simple. ‘What would it mean, if I said I do?’

‘You would admit you care enough of my fool of a brother to consider staying in the mountain for the pleasure of his company.’

‘Kíli? You’re offering me… courtship, is that right?’ And she never thought it would come to this, and her heart hurt for Fíli’s sake. ‘But the two of you–-’ she didn’t finish the thought.

‘Yes! You didn’t think I’d come courting alone, did you?’

 _Oh._ Tauriel searched in vain for some words adequate to her astonishment. Whatever it was she had expected, this was not it.

Her startled disbelief must have shown, because Kíli’s face fell. ‘You did. Oh Mahal, you did.’

‘You can do that?’ Tauriel said, and cringed at the weak, incredulous sound of her voice. ‘I mean,’ she tried anew, ‘you two– would court me together? Court to marry?’ The words were ridiculously blunt, but she did not have the patience for subtlety, not with her heart vaulting and leaping in her chest, fit to burst from the mixture of surprise and indignation and fierce joy that sped through her veins.

‘Our custom is–’ Fíli said, then interrupted himself and started over. ‘It’s not uncommon for siblings, or close friends… or lovers to go courting together. I take it’s not done, then, in the Woodland Realm?’ His grave expression was somehow worse to look upon than Kíli’s stricken one.

Tauriel shook her head. ‘No. To court, it’s just the two. And to lie with, just for the pleasure of it… you don’t ask.’

‘Oh.’ Kíli slowly let go of her hand. ‘That’s… different.’

‘Kíli and I – we’ve known for a long time now that either of us would only marry if we found a third. It’s said to be lucky, having three in a marriage,’ said Fíli. ‘And we… you’ve been lucky for us, ever since we met. I’m so sorry. We thought you understood.’

‘I didn’t! You never spoke a word of it and I thought you only wanted– that I was imagining there was anything more to it–‘ She turned to point at him with the sheathed knife in her hand– ‘Fíli– answer me this: would you court me for your own sake as well, and not only because… because you love him?’ _Because I would that you wanted me, too._

Fíli drew a deep breath, then took her hand. ‘To begin with, I only wanted to know you, to find out if there was ever a chance of– well, of anything ever growing between us, because Kíli fell for you from the first. That blood moon story – he would not have told that to someone he only wanted to lay with.’

‘And you?’

Fíli shook his head slightly. ‘Didn’t care one way or the other.’

‘It would have been too easy, if you had,’ Kíli put in. ‘It’s like…’ he paused, perhaps to search for the right words. ‘It’s like I’m the spark and Fíli’s the embers: one catches quickly and the other takes a bit of coaxing. But you–’ he reached out to clasp his hands over Tauriel’s and Fíli’s– ‘you’re just right for both of us.’

‘But I didn’t think much of you at first,’ Tauriel confessed to Fíli, ’it was Kíli I missed all last winter.’

‘And now?’

‘I can see why he loves you.’

‘That is not the answer I wanted.’ Fíli’s thumb stroked softly over the back of her hand. ‘Because even if this is hurried and uncouth, I would court you and bed you and share with you my house and hearth.’

A strange heaviness was growing in the air about them, not unlike the scent of an oncoming storm, and there was a weight to each word now there had not been a moment before.

‘You say that I’m “lucky”, and “right”,’ Tauriel said slowly, ‘and I think… I think you’re the same for me. I would not go if I could stay.’

‘Is that a “yes”?’

And the tension broke, not with a thunderclap, but laughter, sudden like a summer rainfall that washed the world new and clean.

‘Yes. That is a “yes”.’

Tauriel felt warm like never before, held close in an embrace of three. And she had meant but brush her mouth over Kíli’s, but he made a such a sweet, unguarded sound of surprise that she could but chase it, intent on hearing it again. Golden hair spilled in riotous waves between her fingers, and Fíli’s arms were a solid strength around her, drawing her in, and she gasped in spite of herself as his tongue traced the curve of her upper lip, the tingling sensation awakening a flickering warmth deep within her.

Kissing the two of them was different from any other first kisses she had ever known, strange and sweet all at once, interspersed by murmured apologies and breathless words of endearment. It was the one kiss she had waited for the longest, the one she had spent so long in wanting, and it felt right that they should linger at it.

Some long, uncounted moments later they were all lounging on the sun-warmed stone, Fíli leaning against her shoulder, her hands idly teasing the tangles from Kíli’s hair as he lay with his head in her lap. She was humming under her breath, a soft repeating melody without words, then abruptly stopped.

‘There was something you would give me,’ she recalled, nudging Fíli gently with her elbow.

‘It could have waited.’ But he produced a small cloth-wrapped package from his pocket nonetheless.

The small stone box felt cool against her skin, and heavier than it looked like. Tauriel turned the smooth octagon of pale green stone in her hands, admiring the silvery new-leaf hue, and realized the box had _seven_ angles, but no catch or hinge she could see.

Kíli gave a low whistle. ‘A puzzle box? That’s what you’ve been up to, all this time!’

‘Do you want me to show you how to open it?’ Fíli asked.

‘Please!’

‘You twist it here–’ he placed his warm hands over Tauriel’s– ‘then press here and here at the same time–’ The smooth stone clicked beneath her thumbs– ‘then twist a bit the other way, but only a bit, it locks up again if you turn it too far–’

She couldn’t contain her cry of surprise and delight as the lid suddenly sprang open. The inside of the box was lined with soft blue cloth and divided into three smaller compartments.

‘It’s… I know you don’t wear much in the way of ornaments, but I knew you had kept Kíli’s stone; and well, everyone has some small things they need a safe place for, don’t they?’

‘That’s a really bad case of wishful thinking – he’s hoping you’ll take to wearing beads and such, so he’s giving you somewhere to keep them.’

‘Oh hush, you.’ Tauriel took said runestone from inside her jacket where she kept it safe: it fit perfectly in the largest partition. ‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’

Fíli stopped her when she made to close the box. ‘Hold it up to the light.’

She did, and her breath caught once more. The sunlight passed through the carving on the inside of the lid, illuminating a star made of interwoven beech-leaves, the individual stems and veins skillfully crafted in translucent stone. ‘Why?’ was the only thing she thought to say. ‘Why beech-leaves?’

‘Those were the trees that grew where we first met, and–’ he added hurriedly, as an afterthought– ‘I think they are fine to look at.’

Tauriel closed the box, feeling the hidden clasp snap shut. When she looked up at Fíli, she was puzzled by the expectant look on his face.

‘You never said you accept. Not even to Kíli.’

‘I said “yes” – is that not enough?’

‘Some words matter.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Very well. I accept: your gifts, your courtship, the both of you, wherever it may take us.’

‘Wherever, you say–’ and Kíli’s eyes were dark now, sparkling with the blatant invitation of the day before– ‘and Fíli said something about a bed, didn’t you?’

‘You would need to find us a proper bed first, not some mattress and a pile of furs.’

‘And here was I thinking a wood-elf would not care for luxuries.’

Tauriel mock-punched Fíli. ‘A bed is hardly a luxury! You can’t have someone properly in a tree– although,’ she paused and decided she had walked into it anyway– ‘everyone tries that once.’

Fíli burst out laughing, and Tauriel did as the mood took her, pressing her lips to his cheek, to the side of his nose, to his mouth. Someone brushed the hair off her face, and she felt her skin flush under the touch, suspecting it was Kíli, and that he was watching, and then she was teasing Fíli’s mouth open with the tip of her tongue, deepening the kiss, curling her fingers in his hair, until she could no longer endure Kíli’s wandering hands and not kissing _him_. She lingered though, for a final peck to the corner of Fíli’s mouth, and then Kíli was pressing her against his brother’s chest, his hands gentle yet firm on her shoulders, and she sighed with deep warm contentment as he captured her lips with his own.

And Tauriel would have spun an eternity out of that moment, if she could have, an ever-stretching spring-golden afternoon of lazy embraces, sweet words, sweeter kisses, easy promises. What she had found, she had not even thought to look for, and it only made the discovery infinitely more precious.

#### Epilogue

One. Two. Three. Four. Tauriel counted the bell-strokes as they echoed and hummed through the stone above and around her, the sound clearer now than in the daytime, for all that the mountain never quite slept, for daylight hours held less meaning here than they might have done in a surface kingdom. She drew her knees up against her chest beneath the heavy deerskin blankets – her own gift to their new household – and leaned her chin atop her crossed arms.

As the wolf’s hour provided no sunlight to divert into their chambers, the sole source of light was a single candle, marking the passing hours by its shortening. In this darkness before the dawn, when she needed no more rest, Tauriel would sometimes sit and watch them.

Neither of the slumbering forms beside her had stirred at the sound of the bell. Kíli always looked younger than his years when asleep, and never more so than with his brother lying beside him for comparison. Because while Kíli still kept his beard cropped short to keep it from snagging on a bowstring, Fíli had let his grow, and the wiry, golden curls now brushed at his collarbone. Tauriel itched to run her fingers through them, to feel the softness against her skin.

‘Morning,’ a sleepy voice murmured and drew Tauriel from her silent contemplation. Kíli was looking up at her, the faint light reflecting from his half-lidded eyes.

‘Barely morning,’ she replied, and bent down to brush a soft kiss over his lips, then lingering for another, sweet and unhurried.

‘It’s getting light,’ he assured her, then reached up to quickly kiss each of her breasts while she still leaned over him. ‘And good morning to these, too.’

‘Silly.’ Tauriel laughed in surprise, and brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead.

‘I’m only being polite.’

‘Oh.’ She felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, unbidden and irresistible. ‘And would there be any other bit of me you would like to be _polite_ to?’

Kíli made a thoughtful face. ‘Now that you mention it,’ he said, slowly stroking up and down her thigh, ‘I can think a few.’

‘A few?’

‘Well, one in particular. Come here.’ The hand up on her hip tugged her towards him.

‘Too lazy to move, are you?’ But she shrugged off the blankets and straddled Kíli’s chest, resting her forearms on the cool stone of the headboard.

‘I don’t _need_ to move to be right where I want to be.’ Kíli brushed his cheek against the inside of her thigh, and Tauriel shivered at the roughness of stubble on sensitive skin. His warm breath stirred the short, curling hair between her legs, as he softly murmured ‘Good morning,’ and kissed her there once, twice, soft and open-mouthed. At the first flicker of his tongue, Tauriel’s breath escaped her in a short, sharp burst, and she canted her hips forward, opening her legs further.

‘Now that is a lovely sight to wake up to.’

Fíli was leaning on his elbows, looking at them, and Tauriel felt a tingle of pleasure flush over her bare skin under his gaze. ‘Good morning,’ he said as he got up to his knees to kiss her shoulder, his hand settling at the small of her back.

She turned her head to capture his mouth in a heated kiss, cupping the side of his face in one hand, the curls of his beard soft where they twined between her fingers. She gasped into the kiss when she felt a single finger stroke at her breast, drawing ever tightening circles around the nipple as she shuddered against Kíli’s mouth.

‘I’d kiss you good morning, too,’ Fíli said to his brother, but I see you’re busy.’

Kíli let his head fall back against the pillow and stuck out his tongue at him. ‘Like you don’t know I’m not picky about _where_ I’m kissed.’

‘Is that so? Where do you think I should kiss him?’ Fíli asked, his words ghosting warm over Tauriel’s ear.

‘Anywhere you can reach.’

Fíli chuckled against her skin. ‘You like my mouth all over him, do you?’

‘You know I do.’ She liked his mouth everywhere.

And it was almost as if he had heard her thoughts, because he lingered, tracing a circuitous path down her body with his lips, over one shoulder blade and down her back, his hands tracing the contours of her behind. Tauriel knew without looking when he moved on to Kíli, from how his grip on her hips tightened briefly, and from how he fell out of rhythm, only to recover it a moment later.

When Kíli muffled a moan against the inside of her thigh, she did turn to glance over her shoulder, and what she saw sent a sharp throb of pleasure down where she was tingling with a suddenly neglected need. Fíli’s mouth would be a distraction to anyone, but she was so very close it didn’t take much, a brush of lips, a sweep of tongue, and knowing exactly, what, and who, was making Kíli so sloppy, to push her over the edge.

Her hands gripped hard at the carven stone vines of the headboard, Kíli bracing her trembling thighs as she came undone, crying out in the grey light of the morning.

‘More?’ Kíli asked, looking up at her. Tauriel shook her head.

‘Not yet,’ she said and rolled off him, snuggling close to his side, trading slow, lazy kisses, her fingers twining into his hair, tangling it beyond all hope, her mouth swallowing his gasps and moans as Fíli slowly took him apart.

Fíli looked entirely too smug as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and Tauriel pulled him to her and tasted Kíli’s pleasure on his lips.

He _fit_ against her, close to her skin, tight in her arms, but why this should be so was an ephemeral thing, dissolving like morning mist as soon as she sought to catch it to examine exactly how it was different to the way Kíli, in turn, felt right to her.

‘It’s past dawn now,’ she said as they lay there afterwards, her hands clasped close over Fíli’s slowing heart.

‘Mmm.’ Tauriel could feel his reply humming into her skin where his back was pressed against her chest. ‘Do you want to get up?’

‘No. Not yet.’ She buried her face into his golden hair, eyes closed, and breathed deep of the warm, grounding scent of him. Behind her, Kíli had started to snore softly, his arm wrapped loosely around her waist. ‘Let’s stay for a moment more.’

She left off chasing. She did not need to understand why it was so, it was enough to know it was so for all of them. And she knew why the dwarves would call a marriage like theirs a lucky one.


End file.
